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Fresh

The Tomatometer is 60% or higher.

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The Tomatometer is 59% or lower.

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AUDIENCE SCORE

Belle de Jour Photos

Movie Info

Belle de Jour dramatizes the collision between depravity and elegance, one of the favorite themes of director Luis Buñuel. Catherine Deneuve stars as a wealthy but bored newlywed, eager to taste life to the fullest. She seemingly gets her wish early in the film when she is kidnapped, tied to a tree, and whipped. It turns out that this is only a daydream, but her subsequent visits to a neighboring brothel, where she offers her services, certainly seem to be real. This illusion/reality dichotomy extends to the final scenes, in which we are offered two possible endings. Thanks to a question of copyright and ownership, Belle de Jour disappeared from view shortly after its 1967 release, not even resurfacing on videotape. When it was reissued theatrically in 1994, many critics placed the perplexing but mesmerizing film on their lists of that year's best films.

Belle de Jour is a film that's ambiguous and alluring in equal measure, and while that can be alienating for modern audiences, this is a film that is still radical, thought provoking and enticing after 50 years.

Deneuve is utterly beguiling in a movie shifting between dream and reality with such deft sleights of hand that we are never sure whether we are watching episodes from Séverine's life or sharing her fantasies.

Audience Reviews for Belle de Jour

Audacious for the time it was made and still provocative and enticing today, this film in an intelligent and psychologically nuanced exploration of sexuality and desire as experienced by a repressed bourgeois woman who feels strongly compelled to act upon her fantasies.

Carlos Magalhães

Super Reviewer

there is a point at which the film stands still a bit too long, but taken as a whole its commentary on the human psyche is very interesting and effective. of course, deneuve is very good, as are each of the supporters, and the mapping of the film was well done. a very good film.

danny d

Super Reviewer

½

Catherine Deneuve stars as a young housewife with masochistic fantasies who feels compelled to work as a prostitute during days while her husband is at work. An ambiguous, dreamlike ending caps this subtle, psychologically complex drama.

Greg S

Super Reviewer

½

Her name is "Belle De Jour," a "daylight beauty." An exploratory on fantasies and on the bourgeoisie, Belle De Jour is a surreal, artful erotica from Luis Buñuel affirmed by a mesmerizing performance from Catherine Deneuve, garbed in Yves Saint Laurent. Bizarre.